Understanding The Economics Of Online Insurance Lead Generation

The whole purpose of this website and the products and services that I offer are to teach insurance professionals how to do online insurance lead generation for themselves as a way to end the dependency upon the lead companies.

I firmly believe that it’s that dependency on the lead companies which is killing the businesses of the vast majority…

… and that only those who learn how to leverage the internet for themselves will be successful moving into the future.

Because insurance professionals have been conditioned into buying leads, one of the main questions I get on my surveys and in coaching calls with my clients is “how much do the leads cost?”

You see, that’s really a difficult question to answer because there are so many variables that actually contribute to what you pay on a per lead basis, because what I teach is completely different than buying a shared lead for $20 or an exclusive lead for $150.

So in this post, what I’m going to do is help you to understand the economics of online insurance lead generation so that you can have a formula that will give you a basic idea of what you can expect to pay for the leads you generate using the methods that I teach.

There’s a couple of key components that are going to contribute to how much you pay for a lead, so let’s examine each of those and piece together the formula for determining your cost per lead.

Each of these components can be manipulated and improved so that you can have a direct impact on what you pay per lead as well. You need to understand that. This is the part of my training program called optimization.

Online Insurance Lead Generation Cost Per Lead (CPL) Component #1:

The first thing that is going to contribute to your cost per lead is the traffic source that you are using and how much you pay for that traffic.

If you don’t know, traffic is having people visit your website. How you get traffic is by placing advertising 0n different platforms that has a link back to your website.

When people click on that link, you get traffic. In my training program, I show you 7 different platforms that you can advertise on that will drive traffic to your website.

Each of these online insurance marketing methods will charge a different amount for each of the clicks that you get to your website. And all of them work on an auction basis, meaning you set a bid for how much you are willing to pay for each click to your site.

You have total control over that. We are going to refer to this as your cost per click or CPC from here on out. A typical CPC can range from $1 all the way up to $5 depending on what traffic source you are using.

Just keep in mind this piece for right now as I’m going to explain the next component and then I’ll give you an example that utilizes the formula we are putting together here.

Online Insurance Lead Generation Cost Per Lead (CPL) Component #2:

The next piece of this formula has to do with how well your site turns traffic into leads. We call this the conversion rate of your website.

Essentially the conversion rate is the percentage of visitors you get on your site that fill out your form and become a lead.

There are a LOT of different things you can do on your landing page or website that will affect the conversion rate that you get on that page. Again, these are things we discuss in great detail within my ALM program.

Depending on how you set things up on your site, what type of insurance you are promoting and the offer strategy you are using, your conversion rate can be as low as 5% all the way up to as high as 70%.

In order to be able to determine what you will spend on leads, you have to know what traffic source you are using and what your CPC is for your campaign. You also need to know how your site converts that traffic into leads.

Obviously, if you are setting up a brand new system, you have no idea how your site is going to convert until you run a test campaign to find out.

What I like to do when I’m setting up a new system is use some benchmarks for typical conservative conversion rates and what I know I will pay for traffic to my site. Then I can do the math backwards and figure out what I’d pay per lead using those figures.

If my CPL doesn’t work out the way I want, than I know that I have to lower my CPC, increase my conversion rate on my website or perhaps both.

As you can see, the economics of online insurance lead generation are tricky to figure out in the beginning. But once you have actual data to work with, you can apply strategies that have a direct impact on your CPL.

Alright so let’s give you the exact formula for figuring out your CPL with an example.

Let’s say you want to run a test using Facebook traffic. You can get clicks on Facebook for $1 each, so your CPC is $1. To run any valid test, you should have at least 500 clicks coming to your website.

So you want to take your CPC X #of clicks = your campaign cost.

In this example, your campaign cost is $500.

Next you want to figure out how many leads you are going to get using this insurance lead generation method. To do that you take the # of clicks (500) X your conversion rate. To be conservative, you should plan on 5% conversion.

In this example, you’d generate 25 leads.

Then you simple divide your campaign cost ($500) by the number of leads you got (25) = your CPL ($20).

Here’s the formula all in one spot:

Cost Per Lead = Campaign Cost / (Traffic X Conversion Rate)

Like I said before, you have a direct control over what you spend on the traffic and how well your site converts. Those two items impact what your cost per lead are.

Doing online insurance lead generation for yourself isn’t a one size fits all solution like the lead companies provide. Everyone is different, that’s why you need to determine how much you will pay per lead by analyzing specifically what you are doing with your promotions.

I hope that all makes sense.

The three strategic pillars of insurance lead generation over the internet are traffic, conversion and optimization. That’s exactly what you’ll learn in my Agent’s Lead Machine Internet Marketing Mastery Program.

About Me

I have been a licensed insurance professional and registered representative since 2003. During that time, I've built two successful insurance agencies (one from scratch).

Since I began my insurance career, the way that life insurance marketing and marketing for insurance in general has drastically changed. I saw the writing on the wall in 2008 and began learning how to market online.

In the beginning things were tough, but now I've managed to carve out an incredible living through the power of the internet.
I developed this website based off the knowledge I have gained (and continue to gain) as a resource to help insurance agents discover how to generate hot, qualified, and exclusive insurance leads online.

You can get started with some great free resources I put together - click here

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